NEW DELHI: In a fresh standoff with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Boxing Association (IBA) – the sport’s global governing body – has warned its ‘Technical Officials’ from officiating in any of the IOC-sanctioned tournaments, which will act as an qualification pathway to the Paris Olympics in 2024. IBA’s Development Officer, Chris Roberts OBE, has written a letter to the technical officials, reminding them of rules governing the boxing sport and threatening action in case they officiate in any the IOC-backed boxing qualifiers.
“We refer to the communication of yesterday from the IOC, in particular, the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit (PBU), whereby you may have been invited to declare your intentions to act as volunteer technical official for the respective P24 qualification competition and boxing tournament (both IOC tournaments) and granted a deadline until March 21 2023 to complete and submit your application. In this regard, I would like to remind all Technical Officials reference the Rule 1.6.2 of the IBA Technical and Competition Rules. 1.6.2. National Federation, their teams, individual boxers or the competition official are forbidden to participate in an international tournament which is not approved in advance by IBA. The ‘International Tournament’ in the T&C rules ‘means any boxing competition where boxers from different national federations compete”,” Roberts wrote in his mail.
“Considering that the international tournaments announced by the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit are not recognised by IBA as established under the Rule 1.6.1 of the T&C rules, participation in these tournaments is forbidden, unless otherwise approved by the IBA Board of Directors. In order to grant approval, the IOC, must, and as a matter of courtesy, request assistance and support from IBA to approach any TO in the first instance. Disappointingly, it hasn’t happened to date. Please note that according to article 14 of the IBA Disciplinary and Ethics Code, any person who violates or acts contrary to the provisions of the IBA Constitution, IBA Technical and Competition Rules, IBA’s Regulations, Directives, Guidelines, Circulars and Decisions will be subject to the sanctions provided for under Section 6 of this Code. The lack of respect of the general principles in terms of loyalty towards IBA will be taken into account when BA enforces its right to appoint or do not appoint the competition officials for further IBA competitions,” the mail further stated.
